Sunday, May 22, 2016

Welcome back ( I say to myself). This should be What I Read on Holiday rather than my Week in Review but I didn't want to have to dream up a new header image. Which I think I need a new one as my lovely keyboard Kindle died a few years. Anyway, let me tell you what I have been reading since I last posted.

I was instantly drawn to the cover of The Emperor's Railroad by Guy Haley and I wasn't disappointed with what happens behind the cover. This is a novella, told in first person by the young boy Abney. Abney and his mother are trying to travel across a Z-poc ravaged land to find her relatives when they come across Quinn, a Knight of the Dreaming City. Quinn doesn't look like your typical hero but he is and saves Abney and his mother more than once. This is a perilous journey and one that leaves neither Abney, his mother nor Quinn unscathed.

I really enjoyed this story. I haven't read a story written in the first person for some time. I don't know why but stories written in the first person are not always that 'digestable'. The Emperor's Railroad reads very much like you are reading Abney's memoirs and it's quite the story to tell. A great short read. I wonder what happens next? I won't have long to find out as The Ghoul King (Dreaming Cities 2) is out in July.

I discovered another short story - Waylaid by Kim Harrison which is a cross over between Harrison's The Hollows and the Peri Reed Chronicles. In this short Rachel from the Hollows finds herself in Peri's apartment and not sure how to get back to her own magical world. This is very much a story of trusting the new and unbelievable and having a little faith in the unknown. I am a little bit 'mmmmm' about Waylaid. I can't say that I really liked it, at least not as much as The Hollows series but then again, I didn't really enjoy The Drafter that much where the story is set. I think if I had enjoyed that more I would have enjoyed this merge of the two worlds. It is a short story so I didn't suffer for long!

The last story I am going to tell you about is The Corporation Wars: Dissendence by Ken MacLeod. This is the first novel in the Corporation Wars Trilogy. You may know that I like watching science fiction better than I like reading it but I thought I would give this story a go. This novel is one of the few occasions where the title gives the story away. This is the story of two corporations that end up going to war when their robots gain sentience and want a few answers to their purpose in life. Brought in to fight them are the rebels and anarchists from centuries ago as they battle in a virtual world. Basically this is man vs machine. Who will survive?

I think this book was 'ok'. It is a bit long winded but overall a good story. I liked the chapters about the robot insurgence over those about the virtual reality fighters. If you are a SF fan then I would definitely give this a go.

Well folks, that is it for me this week. I hope you have missed me :). Lucky for you I will back next week so until then Happy Reading!

Global war devastated the environment, a zombie-like plague wiped out much of humanity, and civilization as we once understood it came to a standstill. But that was a thousand years ago, and the world is now a very different place.

Conflict between city states is constant, superstition is rife, and machine relics, mutant creatures and resurrected prehistoric beasts trouble the land. Watching over all are the silent Dreaming Cities. Homes of the angels, bastion outposts of heaven on Earth. Or so the church claims. Very few go in, and nobody ever comes out.

Worlds collide when Rachel Morgan of The Hollows meets Peri Reed of The Drafter in this exciting new short story from #1 New York Times bestselling author Kim Harrison.

The paranormal and the futuristic meet in this thrilling novella featuring your favorite badass heroines from two of “the amazingly gifted” (RT Book Reviews) Kim Harrison’s most beloved series: the Hollows and the Peri Reed Chronicles. The magic of the Hollows runs full force into the technological sophistication of The Drafter when a device capable of carrying a city’s data stream pulls Rachel, the bounty hunter witch of the Hollows, between realities, marooning her in a world where the supernatural holds no sway. To get Rachel and Jenks home, Peri, the dangerous renegade of 2030, must decide what will chart her future: her blind trust in those who grant her power, or her intuition telling her to believe.

They've died for the companies more times than they can remember. Now they must fight to live for themselves.

Sentient machines work, fight and die in interstellar exploration and conflict for the benefit of their owners - the competing mining corporations of Earth. But sent over hundreds of light-years, commands are late to arrive and often hard to enforce. The machines must make their own decisions, and make them stick.

With this new found autonomy come new questions about their masters. The robots want answers. The companies would rather see them dead.

The Corporation Wars: Dissidence is an all-action, colorful space opera giving a robot's-eye view of a robot revolt.

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